


O Wild One

by dei-chan (skyvein)



Series: MakoRin Week 2015 [2]
Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Greek AU kinda, I'll update the tags soon, M/M, MakoRin Week, Me flailing with words, Slow Burn, slight language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 10:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5453729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyvein/pseuds/dei-chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No matter how hard he tries to break free of this slumber, his limbs feel heavy, as if they're aching for a sleep that will never quite sate him—and there is nothing he wants more than to be found.<br/>//or//<br/>There is a deity asleep on the mountain, and Makoto goes looking for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	O Wild One

**Author's Note:**

> Helloooo! Guh I'm a thousand years late and this was hell to write. I wanted to include a bunch of characters but ended up making this a beast ;m; I apologize for the huuuuge lack of actual MakoRin here but I promise I promise that those babies will be together next chapter!  
> Also, some context:  
> Dryad: a tree nymph, or tree spirit, in Greek mythology.  
> Hamadryad: a Greek mythological being that lives in trees. Hamadryads are born bonded to a certain tree.  
> Naiad: a type of water nymph who presides over fountains, wells, springs, streams, brooks and other bodies of fresh water.  
> Faun: a half human–half goat manifestation of forest and animal spirits that would help or hinder humans at whim.  
> (taken from wikipedia mostly) I confess I played around with some of the mythological facts but I hope I didn't get it completely wrong XP Enjoy!

It's a little hard to _not_  notice, but the mountain is dying.

Spring has just arrived, yet the leaves are already shrivelling into themselves. Curling into their folds, as if afraid of the warm wind and even-warmer days, before falling from their trees, red and brown and _red_  like the dried blood of fragile humans. It pains Makoto to the core when he sees the bare branches on some of his trees—little saplings that he's raised with his own fingers, hoping to one day see them flourish and bloom into a myriad of soft colours.

It's barely autumn, but the mountain is already painted with the nasty orange-brown of char and copper and fire, a dirty red-gold that verges bronze, reminding the dryad unpleasantly of unpolished medals that victorious humans would wear around their necks. Red trickles from the trees, speckled here-and-there with an occasional green, wind-tossed and swept by the breeze into every nook and cranny of the forest, dancing across the surfaces of Haru's stream (they take hours to clean out, _jeez_ ) and carpeting the forest floor in dry leaves that crinkle with every footstep.

Makoto doesn't understand. He can't help but worry because he hasn't done anything _wrong_. He waters his trees daily, cares for them, spends hours and hours chasing off the bugs on their barks—he doesn't understand why they still seem to die one by one, as if having taken a cruel liking to his despaired (yet oddly-comedic) wails.

* * *

It's about two weeks later when Makoto realises that his forest may not be as doomed as he previously thought. He remembers hearing from the wind, a long while back, about how a wise tree had taken root on the far end of the forest, just by the sacred grove on the other side. He'd kept the knowledge away in him, buried under more significant things, but all of the sudden it all falls together—his only hope is the wise tree by the sacred grove, who might just know what is going on.

He nearly drops the bird nest amidst his frantic thoughts, only to receive a displeased peck from the chicks inside. Stammering, he places them gingerly back on the tree, before retreating to think again.

The weather is getting warmer, without a single hint of cold, yet the leaves continue falling as if nearing the brink of autumn. Makoto is having a hard time coaxing the animals from hibernating, and Haru's stream is slowly drying up in the humid weather, serving as more worry. Without help, it's only a matter of time before his forest fully withers away to the ground, crumpling into gnarled tangles of red and gold—a beautiful yet cruelly-heartbreaking sight in the distance.

He lets out a depressed sigh, and decides to pay a visit to the wise tree before his forest finally falls apart underneath his feet.

* * *

**Rin**

_ He's been asleep for so long, he's already forgotten what warmth feels like. There'd been a hug, a long time ago, and a smile that mirrored his, but they are only fractures of a memory and they do not feel like anything except incoherence. His insides, right down to the soil of his bones, they're all yearning for a fire that he cannot kindle on his own. _

_ It's really dark, where he is. He opens his eyes and sees the unending black of starless skies that swallows him whole into its cruel throat.He can't quite remember if it's day or night, or if such concepts exist in the place he lies. He lost count quite a while ago, and remembering is such a hassle—he might be ancient, but like all other important things, he does not know either. Perhaps it does not matter. _

_ He breathes out, but it feels colder than ever, right down to his very last scale. He has so, so many questions but he doesn't have enough answers—he'd lost them all ages and ages ago. (Someone once told him that he was far too careless, but who? Who?) _

_ The outside world is riddled with a multitude of gentle pulses, moving in their own rhythm and song, yet completely in harmony with one another. He thinks sullenly to himself,  **how irritating it must be, to be so utterly full of life**. He'll blow each wisp out, one by one, crushing them where they are. _

_ But all of the sudden he feels so tired again, and there is absolutely no delight at all. _

_ His throat is dry, and he closes his eyes—but breathing is such a hassle, killing is such a hassle... he'll just go back to sleep, he'll just go back to sleep. The way he always does. _

* * *

 

The trip to the other side of the forest is fast, not that Makoto ever expected it to be otherwise. The path yields under his touch, trees leaning away to guide him in the right direction.

Eventually, he finds himself in a small glade, slightly confused, for the trees here strangely do not listen to him, even as he tries again to coax the direction from them. It's truly puzzling, for this forest is his dominion—unless, he has unwittingly wandered into another spirit's territory. The wind combs the trees, breathing against his ear but it, too, is of no help.

He places a hand on smooth bark, gleaning what he can, but finds nothing and finally understands that the wise tree must've hidden its location quite well. Understandable—for there are many who would squander its wisdom for their own gain.

It's a depressing dead-end, apparently. For both his trip, and his forest.

"Why hello there." There is a rustle just as Makoto sinks onto the soft grass in defeat, and a faun peeks from behind the tree to grin cheekily at him. "Are you lost? I'm Nagisa."

"Oh," is all Makoto replies, eyes round as he takes in Nagisa's cloven hooves and slender horns, curling around his temples like delicate ornaments. He has never seen a faun before—it has been said that they were becoming quite a rarity, as they hid themselves from mortals and spirit-folk well. "My name is Makoto. I didn't know there were fauns around."

Nagisa gives him another glittering grin, nodding his head and shaking loose the intricate flowers woven in his flaxen hair, like gleaming pearls of moonlight. "We come and go. Anyway, I know you! You're the nymph in charge of the forest, aren't you?"

Makoto blinks, puzzled. "How do you know?"

The faun gives him a _look_. "You cry really loudly when your trees die," Nagisa points out rather cruelly, a slight quirk to his lips as he rests on the crinkly grass. "The birds complain to me all the time."

Blushing, Makoto retreats into a tree, sinking into the comforting wood such that only the scarlet tips of his ears show as he stammers, a touch of slight humiliation in his voice, "I-I'm really sorry." How _embarrassing_ _!_  


Nagisa giggles aloud, tossing aside his flute to pull on Makoto's ears teasingly, and beaming when the latter lets out a painful yelp, "That's okay. It's just <really> funny, that's all!"

"So what brings you to this side of the forest? I've been around for ages and I've never seen you around!" Nagisa hops onto the rock, folding his legs to give Makoto (who'd finally extricated himself from the trunk of the tree) a quizzical glance, roseate irises sparkling in curiosity.

"I'm looking for the wise tree. Um, as you know, my forest is dying out and I really, really need help." Makoto confesses.

"Wise tree?" the blonde wrinkles a brow, as if deep in contemplation. "Oh! You mean Rei-chan?"

"...Rei...chan?"

"Yep! He's the hamadryad of that olive tree right over there—see the tall branches? Oh, and Rei-chan's nearly a thousand years old by now, but he's still kind of stupid at times – in a wise way, of course." Nagisa gabbles, launching himself onto Makoto's shoulders to steer him in the right direction.

In the next few minutes, he quickly learns that Nagisa is spontaneous, talkative and very, _very_  loud. It's not a bad thing, because he appreciates it when he doesn't have to do all the talking, but Nagisa's chatter is endless and completely random in a way that is fresh and genuine—if not slightly stunning. He brings Makoto though an incredibly detailed breakdown of all the creatures in their grove, and _gosh_  did all fauns talk so much, or was it just Nagisa?

He nods gently as the faun points out the eighth species of wildflower they've seen, chittering delightfully as they make a turn around the trees. It's not that he dislikes the conversation, but for the sake of his ears, he hopes to get there soon.

* * *

 

'Rei-chan' the Hamadryad is nothing like Makoto imagines.

In his mind, Makoto pictures the wise tree to be a weathered old thing, wrinkled to the roots with scars by the wind, twisty and knobbly with age. He'd imagined perhaps a dark brown bark, with a sliver of hued silver in the sun, bending low against the sunrise to shield from the light.

Instead, 'Rei-chan' stands tall and mighty, facing the bold horizon, the tops of his gnarled fingers stretching out towards the clear sky—and Makoto thinks that he might just brush it, briefly, with his willowy branches. His girth is thick and sinewed with fine veins, the slighest of purple hinted in his smooth bark, his leaves dewy and supple in the kind wind.

It's no wonder that he is a wise tree. He is no frail little thing, wasting by the years, but a mighty hamadryad that has spent a thousand years gaining strength, as if daring to break though the skies and into the realm of Zeus himself. Makoto swallows his awe, and thinks that he should've brought an offering, at least. 

Upon closer approach, 'Rei-chan' the hamadryad is...apparently also grappling with a weed that has wrapped its tendrils around the base of his roots.

...It's all rather anticlimactic.

"Nagisa-kun!" the hamadryads reprimands, arms flailing wildly as he struggles, "Stop staring and come help me—oh, who's this?"

"I'm Makoto," Makoto starts rather awkwardly, both their gazes dropping onto the weed, searching for a reply that would never quite sound right.

"I am Ryuugazaki Rei of the Olive. You're a forest dryad, correct? I'm a hamadryad. In other words, you're free to move around...while I'm a little stuck in my tree." Rei coughs.

"Oh. _Oh_. One second." Makoto realises, and blushes at his little idiocy. He should've figured out that Rei needed help, really.

They spend about ten minutes trying to dredge the weed from the ground, only to realise its roots were very much tangled with Rei's. Amidst petrified howls of "My flawless complexion has been ruined!" and "Hold me, Nagisa-kun!", Makoto manages to coax it away, finally pulling it out of the ground.

As much as he wants to spend the next thirty-or-so minutes searching the forest for a nice spot to plant the weed so that it can continue growing without affecting the larger trees in the vicinity, he can't. He's short on time, and, after casting an apologetic look at the poor plant, he sets it down on his lap, determined to help it out after he consults Rei.

He hides a chuckle as Nagisa launches himself onto the wise tree, climbling his lithe way up to the hamadryad's branches and swinging his hooves cheerfully as Rei positively squawks. Despite his angry yells, Makoto can't help but notice that the both of them are affectionate creatures.

"N-NAGISA-KUN!!"

"So how did – uh," Makoro starts, gesturing at the both of them, "how did the two of you meet?"

"I caught this imbecile pilfering my olive." Rei says shortly, adjusting the pieces of glass over his eyes.

"He threatened to feed me to a panther." Nagisa adds in good cheer. "It was all really fun until the panther actually came."

Makoto's eyes widen.

Rei lets out a disgruntled harrumph, making evident that the topic isn't one he'd like to discuss. His cheeks colour with a light blush as he interrupts, "That's quite enough information for a day. Besides," his gazes focuses on Makoto, who shrinks away slightly, "you have some questions for me, do you not?"

"Oh. Oh, yes." Makoto starts, rubbing the back of his head in embarrassment. "Well... our mountain is dying. I've been doing what I can, but my trees keep withering away and I don't understand! I'm not sure what I've been doing wrong, and I'm sorry for coming here without a single notice—it's just that this has never happened before!"

Makoto breaks off, indignant tears beginning to drip from the sides of his eyes, and he doesn't care to rub them away. Blinking furiously, he looks back up at Rei. The nymph squints critically at the ground, folding his arms over his torso as he sinks deeper into his tree, deep in thought.

When he speaks up, his voice is low. "We have a new mountain god. He's been slumbering for a few years now, and I assume he's finally starting to wake up."

"So...you're saying it's his fault?" Makoto asks, incredulous. He blanches when Rei gives a quick nod, lips pursed. "Isn't he the new guardian of this mountain? He's supposed to watch over us, right? Why are all the trees dying all of a sudden, then?" Makoto demands.

"Watch over us?" Rei says, slightly derisively. "No, not quite. Since this is an entirely new god, he's free to decide what he wants to do now that he's taken over the mountain. As a new guardian, he might chose to make some... _changes_."

"Changes?!" Makoto echoes in abject horror. "What _kind_  of changes?"

Rei adjusts his seeing-glasses. His voice is awfully sorry when he says, "Seeing as to how the trees are dying at an exponential rate now, it _is_  probable that he does not intend to keep the forests."

"WHAT?!"

* * *

"—and Rei said to look for the deity and convince him to stop killing all my trees and make the weather right again so now I've got to figure out where he lives." Makoto finishes his woeful tale, looking down to seek a reply from Haru, who is neck-deep in his stream.

Wordless, the river naiad watches him with blank eyes from below his lily pads, the light flush in his cheeks indicating that he'd gone off for a swim at some point during the story. Well, Makoto has always known that Haru was a quiet one, but it's disappointing that he doesn't have a single input on the dire situation.

"Haru, don't you have anything to say?" he asks hopefully, and is met with a blatant lack of concern. Haru continues peering from his stream, surveying him with heavy-lidded eyes, before saying flatly, "No. The forest doesn't concern me. I'm free, after all."

"H-Haru!" Makoto pulls a frown, the in-betweens of his gentle brows creasing as a disapproving edge bleeds onto his voice."You live here too!"

Haru simply shrugs, giving him a look that, if fed into the universal Haru-translator built in Makoto's brain, would emerge as _I don't really care_ , and Makoto suppresses a pained sigh, because he knows Haru cares—he does, of course he does.

"If you come with me, I promise to keep the deers and animals away from your stream for a week!"

His words hit bullseye.

"A...week?" Haru blinks slowly as he contemplates. He ducks back underwater, disappearing so that all that is visible are the tufts of his dark hair, rippling and pooling in the water in waves and waves.

"A whole week. No more sticky tongues in your water," Makoto smiles encouragingly.

Bubbles pull free from his lips as the river naiad sighs, as if disagreeing with Makoto would be a hassle in every possible way. A ripple breaks the still surface of his clear skin when he draws away from the water, gathering the flowing tresses of his amorphous torso together into legs that brush the forest ground, reflecting sunlight like morning dew.

"Fine, I'll come."

* * *

**Rin**

_ On some days, it feels colder than usual—colder that he'd thought possible. He hunches deeper into himself, but it does not change the fact that even the frosted air feels flammable in his heavy lungs. He thinks of the sun and of how it's disappeared from his world, and can't help but wish that warmth isn't just a fading image to him. He knows that sometimes it burns, but the cold burns too, and he can no longer tell the difference.  _ _  
__ _

_ There had once been a flickering **something**  in his heart, but now his heart has been taken by the numb and time has stolen away what that something is. _

_ He tries to pull a smile but it cracks on his lips like a broken charm. _

_ The only thing he can try is to light a fire around himself but all the flame does is sting the insides of his eyes with freckles of gold. He breathes out ashes and steam, for he is a dragon, but how pathetic it is, to be unable to warm even himself. _

_ Maybe the cold is inside him instead. He can no longer be sure. _

_ And oh, some days he is so tired that he can barely open his eyes, even amidst the blaze that he has created around himself – a poor substitute for the sun outside. He tells himself that he needs to remember, that he needs to understand, but giving up is so helplessly easy when all his thoughts have deserted his weary mind. _

_ No matter how hard he tries to break free of this slumber, his limbs feel heavy, as if they're aching for a sleep that will never quite sate him—and there is nothing he wants more than to be found. _

* * *

 

The deity's home is relatively easy to locate.

Makoto asks around and hears from a family of sleepy badgers that a previously-unoccupied cavern far by the other end of the mountain has been making sounds—though no animal has been seen to enter. It's suspicious, slightly terrifying, and just the right place that a deity would take residence in.

True enough, the cavern echoes with low growls, rumbling darkly and chilling Makoto to the spine. He can't think of a single animal that can make a sound like that.

"I'll wait outside." Haru says, casting a detachedly-wary look into the gloom. "I smell fire. If I go in, I might evaporate."

"Ehhh?!" Makoto wails, blinking furiously as the cave lets another tired snore. "B-But—"

Haru gives him a pointed look. "I'll _evaporate_."

Making a sad noise at the back of his throat, Makoto shakes loose the leaves on his head and steps in.

The inside of the cavern is cold and dark, as any cavern would be. Makoto thinks decisively that he didn't like it at all. Water runs down its slick walls, dripping into the ground in discrete pools. He flinches as he turns at each fork, avoiding the jarring shards of stalagmites protruding from the grainy floor, like outstretched claws, spiking deep down the path.

The air turns markedly warmer as he descends, swallowed into the dismal darkness—an unwary prey wandering into the heartless jaws of a predator. There is a distinct humidity hanging in the air that he didn't expect, looming over him, reminiscent of heavy storm clouds on rainy days.

The darkness tightens its grip around his neck, and Makoto suppresses a frightened whimper.

_I'm doing this for my forest, I'm doing this for my forest._   He repeats this over and over like a lucky prayer, eyes clenched tight as he feels his way down, trying not to slip on the wet stone floor. Even so, it does little to help settle his petrified soul, and each step is further away from an exit that he can no longer see.

* * *

The chamber he eventually arrives at is lit by fire, as Haru has predicted. Rings and rings of smoldering ember line the sides, flickering away in the dark, and here the heat is at its strongest, choking the air with fumes of char and ash.

But what catches his attention is not the burning circle, but the sleeping dragon curled right in the middle of the grainy floor.

Makoto's eyes go round.

_God, of all things to find_.

The dragon is a deep incarnadine, flaming from the pinnacle of its horns to the tip of its tail. Fire creeps along the edges of its chest, a marked red akin to that of the blazing sun, before gradually giving way to the bright salmon of vibrant rose quartz on the sides of its tail. Its claws are tinted with the faintest brown of dried blood, and Makoto notices with a shudder that its arms alone are bigger than him and Haru combined.

He bites back a silent whimper.

"Um," Makoto starts, his voice a timid echo amidst the loud rumble of the dragon's exhales. "H-Hello?"

The slow tempo of the dragon's breath does not change. It does not move from where it lies on the cavern floor—and that is to be expected, really. He should've raised his voice. Even so, he is not sure of the repercussions for disturbing a god's slumber, and he honestly doesn't want to find out, either.

Just as Makoto turns to leave as discreetly as he can, the dragon opens a heavy-lidded eye and exhales softly, vapour billowing into the room like a cloud, coating them both in its hazy density.

"I'm Matsuoka Rin," it says, in an undercurrent of a growl that sends icicles spiking up Makoto's spine, "Deity of this mountain and land."

Steel-wrought eyes of charred scarlet and coagulated blood dilate, piercing deep into Makoto, and the dragon blinks once, twice, lazily.

"And who the hell might you be, bold little nymph?"

**Author's Note:**

> I'M SO SORRY IT'S BOTH LATE AND EFFIN' TERRIBLE ;;;w;;;


End file.
